A Study on Characteristics of Traffic Flow in Congested Traffic at On-Ramp Influence Area

Most traffic congestion on a freeway occurs in the merge area, where conflicts between mainline traffic and on-ramp traffic are frequently generated. So far, research on the merge area has mainly dealt with free flow traffic and research on the congested traffic at the merge area is rare. This study investigates the relationships between mainline traffic and on-ramp traffic at three different segments of the merge area. For this purpose, new indicators based on such traffic variables as flow, speed, and density are used. The results show that a negative relationship exists between mainline and on-ramp flow. It is also found that the speed and the density of the right two lanes in the mainline traffic are significantly affected by the on-ramp flow. Based on the correlation analysis of the indicators, it is confirmed that the ramp influence area is the right two lanes of the freeway mainline. The revealed relationships between mainline and on-ramp traffic may help to analyze the capacity of the downstream freeway segment of the merging area in congested traffic. The findings of this studyalso provide a basis to develop a model that estimates the merge traffic volume in congested traffic, which is neither theoretically nor empirically sound in most other traffic flow models developed so far.